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Mozambican media hails Mozambique-China relations

Mozambique’s major media on Friday praised the meeting between the country’s leader Filipe Nyusi and Chinese President Xi Jinping during the Johannesburg Summit of Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in South Africa.

The state-owned news agency AIM said in its report that the meeting of the two leaders on Thursday, which focused on poverty reduction was the first between the two presidents since Nyusi’s inauguration in January.

The news agency reported that China has been Mozambique’s friend since the 1960s and has supported Mozambicans in their fight for independence from Portuguese colonial rule.

The report named a few examples of infrastructure projects funded by Chinese government, including the Maputo Ring Road, the Maputo-Catembe Bridge and some other projects in the educational and medical sectors.

The news agency said that Mozambique hoped that the ongoing summit would lead to increased Chinese investments in the country to further boost economic growth.

Mozambique’s biggest newspaper Noticias said in its Friday report that the level of Sino-Mozambican cooperation is described as “to grow significantly,”judging not only by the amount of Chinese investment in Mozambique, but also the trade volume between the two countries.

Data from Mozambican authorities show that Mozambique received 42 million U.S. dollars in grants from China between 2010 and 2012 and over 1 billion U.S. dollars in investments within the same period, which funded 88 projects and created more than 14,000 jobs. The trade volume between the two countries exceeded 3 billion U.S. dollars in 2014.